Imagine if there was a form of Twitter where at a touch of a button you could decide if the message went to a single house, street, neighbourhood – or even an entire town, city or county depending on the need.

It would revolutionise comms around things like bin collection changes, road closures, school closures and planning apps – right?

Think about the savings of never having to produce a direct mail again – let alone the reputational value of keeping residents informed.

Haringey Council, together with newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror, have built a mobile phone app which enables us to send highly targeted information using GPS co-ordinates.

When I first joined Local Government Communications (LGcommunications), I was really keen to make sure that I could do everything I could to provide help and support to public sector communications colleagues up and down the country.

One of the areas that seemed to come up time and time again was the challenge of ever decreasing local authority budgets and how we change the conversation with residents. Not only that but how could we made sure that we as councils didn’t fall foul of not doing what we need to when communicating about proposed changes in major areas that directly affect people’s lives.

That’s why, myself and fellow LGcommunications executive member Julian Ellerby, working together with the Local Government Association and the Consultation Institute who have both kindly agreed to support the initiative, are working together on a guide that looks to help local government communicators on communicating all things budget.

At commscamp 15 last week, I pitched a session on the future of communications teams.

We all know that the model of communications has changed massively. People now have the ability to have their voice heard more than ever before. It means traditional communications models can fall well short and that we need to be up for listening, engaging and acting on what communities and others are telling us.

I was keen to hear what good stuff people are doing and what ideas they had for the future of communications teams in this context. Made all the more helpful for me as I grapple with what is coming down the track for a head of communications in a unitary local authority.